Their pace begins slow, devolves to sluggish, deteriorates to lethargic, then concludes with a full Kevorkian.

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Last year, Americans drove nearly 3,000,000,000,000 miles. I like seeing all those zeros. It makes the number feel real. It also looks a little like a truck stop.

Frankly, I can’t believe we’ve collectively driven even 3000 miles. For the past few years, I’ve noticed that Midwestern drivers aren’t doing anything I recognize as driving. In fact, what they’re doing is sitting. For instance, at roughly one out of every three red lights here in Ann Arbor, the driver in front of me will fail to move when the light turns green. His head will be bent downward and slightly to the right, as if his neck muscles have atrophied. I honk, but there’s no immediate movement in response. Instead, the heavy head rises inch by inch, as if recovering from a ghastly load of anesthesia. Then the driver—who’s actually a sitter—slowly seems to gain a dim awareness of his surroundings, all of them new, bewildering, and unfriendly. I honk again. He gives me the finger. Beautiful. He’s not dead after all, although part of me wishes he were both dead and moldering in a grave soaked in beagle urine.

Drunk drivers, you say? God, how I wish. I long for the days of dangerous drunks. I could spot them from 1000 paces, accelerating to the speed limit, then coasting to a velocity between 9 and 12 mph, the front wheels ever eager to locate a ditch, both sweaty hands clasped in immovable iron bands at 3 and 9 o’clock, just as Coach Bergendorfer always taught us until he lost his driver’s-ed job after that unfortunate third DUI. In 1982, there were 26,173 alcohol-related fatalities in our great land. By 2008, the figure had fallen to 13,846. Drunks are practically endangered.

At least I could see the drunks coming. But those who have willed themselves into a sputtering, dyspeptic, muttering standstill won’t give me that satisfaction. On gray winter mornings, they aim their gray cars along gray roads under gray skies—but can they turn on their lights? No, they cannot. Too complex, too daunting, too energy-sapping. Furious, I flash my lights. Their heads nod but not in understanding. When daytime running lights first appeared, I despised them because they finally put an official stamp on our national insistence on one wet nurse per U.S. driver. Now we need DRLs.

How is it possible that so few American drivers are able to maintain the speed limit or even approach it? What of the hordes who rely on the berm as an alarm clock? How come I’ve never seen a cop do anything—ever—about the swarm of self-absorbed mutants, who, averaging 49 to 52 mph, refuse to vacate the left lane?

What’s up with the closed head injured who, in a line of cars stopped at a light, park 30 to 60 feet behind the vehicle in front? What does that even mean? Leaving room for an escape? An escape to where? To the nearest Cracker Barrel where more valuable sitting can be undertaken?

And what of the drivers who pull in front of you, only to . . . well, die is what I think they’re doing. They’re the Dying Quails, and their motto is: “Immediately, do nothing.” They’ve lost the will to live, so you can imagine how much energy they devote to driving. Their pace begins slow, devolves to sluggish, deteriorates to lethargic, then concludes with a full and glorious Kevorkian. Last week, I watched a Dying Quail—no transportational goal, no aspiration in life other than a yearning for warm feet—come terminally to rest in a four-way intersection under the green light, whereupon she lost all further interest in motor functions and in her motor’s, too.

Texting, you say? Some of them. But mostly these dispirited spirits turn out to be my brethren boomers—confused, scared, shaky, bewildered, sunspotted, and deeply hemorrhoidal. They’re Sunny Acres escapees who are fuming over Fox News conspiracy theories in which tiny, meth-addicted howler monkeys are secretly dismantling their 401Ks during the NBA playoffs. Well, get used to it. There were 39.6 million persons aged 65 or older in 2009—13 percent of the U.S. population. And in 2030, these morbidly obese, rictus-faced, gas-passing candidates for burst aneurysms will account for 19 percent of us—yeah, me among them—although when I say “account” I don’t mean they’ll be sentient. God help us if, while huffing and puffing in front of an open Frigidaire, holding their mouths in a sustained gape—more decisions, more decisions!—they accidentally discover behind their stacked bottles of joint-comfort glucosamine the keys to the Park Avenue.

America, be ashamed. Be very ashamed. It’s not okay to self-induce a kind of paroxysmal narcolepsy in order to forestall personal action behind the wheel.

Judge: “You are charged with driving seven miles per hour in a 65 zone. How do you plead?”

Defendant: [Silent. Head on chest, asleep or in a coma, possibly dead.]